Hugo Talks About Astor Piazzolla

My friend Hugo Wainzinger is a very talented guitarist, composer, and arranger, who also runs a recording studio here in Mountain View, California. I drop by his studio from time to time, to chat and to play some tunes. A couple of months ago, Hugo told me this story about the time he got to hang out with Astor Piazzolla. I asked him to tell it again and record it; here is the transcript. For more information about Hugo and his studio, please check the link at the end of this post.

In the early ‘70s, I was about 20, my mom was a singer in Buenos Aires; she was from Uruguay. At that time she was playing gigs in different nightclubs. One of the nightclubs she was playing was called “Caño Catorce.” Caño is like a conduit - number 14, that was the name of the place. It was kind of like a Village Vanguard in Buenos Aires, or Blue Note, for tango - mostly for tango. My mother was a melodic singer; she sang boleros, bossa novas, some tangos, some folklore from Argentina. There were other artists playing that night at that gig; among them was Astor Piazzolla, with his octet, or nonet, it depends who was available at that moment.

So the story is about a certain day, when my mother wanted me to accompany her to the rehearsal, or soundcheck, with the band. She was singing, and the accompanists were a trio - Carlos Garcia was name of the the pianist, who did the arrangements; he was a famous piano player in Argentina, also a tango musician, with two other people who I don’t recall.

I remember that the day I went there, Piazzolla was rehearsing his band, doing sound, and stuff like that. They were like halfway done, and they took a break. And during that break my mother was doing a sound check with her band. So I had the chance to talk with Piazzolla.

He saw me there sitting, and said, “Hola, pibe” - that means “Hey, kid” - “What are you doing here?” I said, “My mother is Rita Cortez, she’s the singer.” He said, “Oh, Rita, yeah, I know her very well, she’s a great singer. So you’re her son.” I said, “I’m one of them, we are five brothers and sisters.”

“So, do you like the music?” “Yeah, of course I like the music.” Actually that was kind of lying. I was into the Beatles. Anything that was not Beatles, or the Tremoloes, or Herman’s Hermits, or Emerson Lake and Palmer, or something like that, I was not really interested. Tango was number 248 on my priorities. Tango at that time was something that the elders - to me, that could be 30 or 40 years old - were listening to when they said, “kid, go play outside, we’re having a grown-up conversation.” So I associated tango music, even jazz music, with people I couldn’t talk to. I kind of put that music aside, you know, with no real reason, because I didn’t think of the greatness of the music at that moment, even less tango.

So Piazzolla was no different. I knew who Piazzolla was, but I didn’t know how big he was going to become, and how he was making his mark in Argentinian tango. He was a bandoneon player, but I didn’t know that he also was a great piano player. He studied with Nadia Boulanger, who told him that as a classical player...he should stick to tango, which is what he does best.

So he asked me if I liked the music, I said yes, I was lying. I said yes because I was afraid the he was going to slap me if I said “I don’t really care about your music.” Which was true. I didn’t care about tango, I didn’t care about boleros, I didn’t care about anything that wasn’t Beatles or pop music. So we started our conversation with a lie.

He asked me, “What kind of music do you like, besides the music that you say you like?” Well, I really liked the Beatles. I asked him what he thought about the Beatles. He told me that it was a fad, like Chuck Berry, like Little Richard. Which he was listening to, of course, because it was on the radio - radio was the most important thing happening back then, for promotion.

He started talking about what tango is. He had played in the orchestra of a famous bandoneon player, Anibal Troilo, very famous in Argentina; Piazzolla had been one of his principal bandoneon players. Piazzolla strayed from playing with that formation, and from what he had been doing with his own groups, playing music - with a different dynamic for what the tango will be. The formal time signature of the tango is 2/4, in Spanish “el dos por cuatro,” That’s a famous phrase: “el dos por cuatro” means tango no matter what, in Argentina.

So he strayed from the original form of the tango, instead of a basic rhythm of straight quarter notes, going

That’s actually what he changed in the tango. The purists of tango were disgusted, they didn’t want the tango to be altered the way Piazzolla altered it. And then, because of Piazzolla’s classical education, he put a lot of aspects of classical music into what tango became, but of course still based on popular dynamics and melodies. 

Our conversation went from, at first, very superficial...our conversation lasted around two and a half hours, over many little cups of cafe. Like, you know, espressos, but we just call them cafe.

He said that over time, I would change my mind about tango, because I would start appreciating the construction of the melodies, the richness of the lyrics, the stories. Many tangos have stories based on romance, breakups - tango is a sort of Argentinian blues, so to speak. But also many laughable situations, humorous, also social commentary and social critiques. He was explaining all that to me, and with a lot of authority.

He went into many details that at the time I didn’t understand. He was talking about the minor aspect of certain songs, like how when you go from A minor to E/Ab, the descending progression of chords, that conveys abandonment or depression - he went into the graphic, and the coloring aspect of music. And then he told me, “You will remember this conversation for the rest of your life.” I thought to myself, “Who do you think you are?” Well, life and history showed me that he was right; he was a preeminent composer in the world.

Of course, he was a wonderful bandoneon player. I’m sure that he could play other instruments, but at that time I never saw him play other instruments, except the piano. He was going over a phrase with one of his band members; he was playing really great piano. I don’t know what his training was on piano, but he mentioned Nadia Boulanger as one of his big influences on the character of what he developed later. One of the things he said was, “You don’t need anybody to tell you how good you are. You know how good you are, just go for it.” He didn’t need anyone’s opinion, and one of the things he said was, “You don’t like my music? Go and f__ off.” He was pretty assertive, adamant in the way he conducted himself. He could be pretty nice, but pushy at times, and somebody who, it felt like a hurricane going over you, with his opinions about stuff. When I left the conversation, he had to go, and I was still with my mom, it was about noon. We went for lunch to a restaurant close by, because the club only served dinner for the shows, they didn’t serve lunch. I had the feeling that I probably would remember this through the years, I didn’t know why.

I started liking tango later in life, when I was around thirty. I started listening to tango with more attention, caring about how well-crafted the melodies were, hearing some tangos that I hadn’t known existed. I really learned how to appreciate it.

Piazzolla, of course, is probably the most well-known tango exponent in the world, besides Carlos Gardel, who was the most famous singer. But I think for the rest of the world, if you mention any of the classic Argentinian tango composers, they will not remember them; probably they will remember Piazzolla. That was the guy who made himself more famous by playing with “who’s who” everywhere.

He was rather pleasant to me, paternal, kind of. He was like that with his musicians, people he was conducting at the moment.

There was only one occasion when I saw him live, at Teatro San Martin in Buenos Aires. His repertoire was 100% his compositions; he was playing just Piazzolla, with his nonet. It was many years later, when he developed into the electronic - he was actually the creator of the electronic tango. He had electric guitar, drums, synthesizers, and stuff like that.

Actually, I happen to be a Facebook friend with his son, Daniel Piazzolla, who lives in Villa La Angostura in Argentina. Sometimes I’ll make a comment, he laughs at it. He remembers what I was talking about, we have some comments back and forth.

Here are some links:

Hugo's website

La Casita de mis Viejos, one of several great Youtube videos with pianist Carlos Garcia

Libertango, one of Piazzolla's most famous pieces

You can find plenty more Astor Piazzolla, Carlos Garcia, Anibal Troilo, and Daniel Piazzolla on Youtube.

The Dan Quayle Gig

Disclaimer: Although this is an election year, this post should not be taken as involving any sort of political advocacy. It is intended purely as entertainment. Like many gig stories, it illustrates the bizarre situations that performing musicians sometimes encounter.

This gig story is from pianist Nicki Kerns, who swears that it really happened. Here it is, in her own words:

In October 1992, during the presidential campaign, Vice President Dan Quayle was in town to do a fundraiser for Bruce Herschenson, who was running for United States Senator from California. A woman had called me to play for a cocktail party, at which Quayle was going to be the guest of honor. 

At the time, she didn’t tell me that he was going to be there; she just said it was a “high-profile” guest, that security was going to be tight, and that the Secret Service would need my personal information so that they could do a background check on me. Well, if you’re doing a Secret Service check, then you’re playing for the President or the Vice President, right?

So once I figured out that it was Quayle, she admitted it, and said, “Well, you know, it’s a cocktail party, it’s going to be $1,000 a plate, we’ll have some people there. The Vice President’s reputation hasn’t been the greatest lately, and you’re going to be doing background music - so please play whatever you want, except ‘If I Only Had a Brain.’ ”

I thought she was kidding, but she was completely serious, so I said, “Fine.”

Well, the day of the job came, I showed up at this private residence in Los Altos Hills, and apparently it was a really expensive ticket price, because only 24 people showed up. For $1,000 they didn’t even get a plate. They got a cocktail napkin with two pieces of shrimp, and a glass of champagne.

When Quayle arrived with his Secret Service guys in their black limousines, instead of “If I Only Had a Brain,” I played that Gershwin song, “You say potato, and I say potatoe...let’s call the whole thing off.” Nobody caught the joke.

Quayle gave a speech that extolled Herschenson’s virtues while bashing Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, which didn't make me happy. On my way home from the gig I passed a voter registration table in front of a store. The table had a sign asking Democrats to register to vote there. At the time I was a Republican, but that speech had left such a sour taste in my mouth that I stopped at that table, re-registered as a Democrat and put a bunch of "Clinton for President" stickers all over my car.

The best part of this story was that the woman who originally hired me for the Quayle gig hired me again for ANOTHER Republican fundraiser six months later! Of course I said yes, but had to park six blocks from the venue because I thought it would look bad to play at a Republican event with Democrat stickers all over my car.

Note: For readers who may not remember the “potatoe” incident and other details of his political career, see Wikipedia’s “Dan Quayle” entry, in the section “Vice Presidency.”

Gig Story: Out There Orchestra at Stella Blue Tavern

The “Out There Orchestra” was a free-jazz group anchored by Cookie and Bob, who had a house in Belmont with a really nice music room/studio downstairs. The band members changed from time to time; I was part of the sessions for a few months. The musical ethic was, of course, “outness.”

“Out” meant unpredictable, intense, over the top. I don’t think that we ever had any specific tunes, as such, in the repertoire. The idea was to just improvise from the vibe. No groove lasted very long, because that would not have been out enough. We tried to go beyond any musical patterns as soon as they were set up. (See Cookie’s deeper description of the meaning of “out,” in the notes below this story.)

This was in about 1982. Cookie’s comments are in italics.

We’d meet in the evening. Bob would make some killer coffee, and then we’d head downstairs to play.

Beyond coffee, this was part of the ritual. Bob bought an $800 espresso machine from Italy, the equivalent of say a $5000 machine today. There was no Starbucks or Peet’s. One had to drive to North Beach to get a capuccino. From grinding the coffee to steamed half and half, Bob blasted out many well groomed cups for sessions. His technique included pouring the pulled espresso over the steamed half and half... an all important detail to note for historical purposes, of course.

Somehow, the Out There Orchestra got a gig at the Stella Blue Tavern, which was the kind of place that people today call a “dive bar,” down the hill in Belmont, by the tracks. I don’t know how we got the gig. I can’t imagine that anyone brought in a demo tape - although Cookie often did record our sessions. I’m sure that the management had no idea what kind of music we played. The place had a decent-size, raised stage.

I think I got the gig after walking in wondering "what is this place". I asked the owner if we could play here and he said "yes". No demo tape needed. He had no idea what was coming. :)

So we went over to Stella Blue on a Saturday night at 8:30, and set up our equipment. The musicians were: Cookie on keyboards, Bob on drums, Perry on bass, Terry on guitar, Ray on trumpet, and myself on tenor sax (and maybe bass clarinet). We also brought along Willie the Poet, who had made it to a few previous sessions, reading some of his truly “out” poetry, to which we would improvise an accompaniment. Willie’s poetry was dark, in a sort of neo-Bukowski style, with a little William Burroughs thrown in - not for the faint of heart, or for impressionable minors. Willie brought his own six-pack of beer (quarts). There were maybe 8 or 10 customers at the bar, plus the bartender and one other employee.

At 9:00 we started playing. By 9:30 we had driven out all the patrons, leaving only the bartender and employee.

One of the people in the audience was my oldest friend in the world, Amy Yamamoto. She hated the music and left. We had accomplished our job of emptying out the building of paying customers. 

We were just getting warmed up, reaching our first peak of outness. After another half hour or so, the bartender and employee for some reason felt driven to participate in the extreme creativity that they were witnessing. They began to bring objects onto the stage. First several broken chairs, then a mop, then a garbage can. Terry (the guitar player) got into the garbage can and continued to play, then tried to close the lid on himself. The bartender and his friend kept bringing stuff onto the stage. They emptied out a closet and put the stuff on the stage - a moose head, a toilet, a kitchen sink.

The band was unfazed, playing with nonstop outness, periodically bringing the volume down for Willie to read his poetry.

LOL.. are you sure we brought the volume down for Willie? Just joking.

The bartender had given up on doing any business that night. He pushed the pool table over in front of the stage, put a couple of chairs on it, and drank while sitting in the chairs on top of the pool table.

When the gig was over, he invited us back for the next week.

Like breaking up with your spouse, the bartender went through the “Sad, Mad, Glad” phases...well, more like Horrified, Angry, "Nobody's going to believe this so I'm going to give them another gig" phases.

The next Saturday we showed up again. The bartender, impressed by how out we were, had invited a bunch of his friends. Cookie had enlisted a couple of her students, high school girls, as roadies. While we were setting up, the bartender found out that the girls were 16 and said they had to leave. He wouldn't budge. Cookie was ticked off, so we packed up before the gig started and invited everyone to the studio for our performance. We set up again at the studio, bringing along a few bar patrons, and had another great session.

Good times had by all! The assistants in questions were Ritie and Linda, my students. Ritie called me a few years ago having not spoken to her for about 30 years. She wanted to let us know that she turned out well adjusted, happy, and that we changed her life. She's now retired and playing the flute.

If any Bay Area readers remember Friday Night Music, a free-jazz institution that ran in Palo Alto for many years, I can tell you that the Out There Orchestra was similar, but more intense, and with less structure.

Actually, I think we had more structure, just less recognizable, which was the intention.

The house has become the HQ of OTR Studios, a very well-regarded recording studio run by Cookie, who has become a record producer of renown. I play a lot more “normally” these days. Willie is still a poet, more seriously out than ever.

Ray is a senior exec at Intel, Perry works at Stanford, Bob works for Visa and Terry was last seen riding his bicycle in San Francisco with guitar strapped to his back. I enjoy periods of "outness" through an alternate persona called "Blu Cube". Blu Cube was created to protect my career as a music producer. Blu does live dub remixes with electronics in the studio and has more than a dozen credits. I have no idea why.

Update!!! Les, the manager/bartender, has been living in Germany since 1993. He found this story on the web, and checked in with some comments - see below.

More Notes From Cookie

I don't think I would call outness "random". I call our form of out music "reactive listening and improvisation". Like Picasso, OTO had various periods of how we dealt with music. It was musical evolution through revolution. We were pushing ourselves to extremes.

Prior to performing with you and Willie the Poet, OTO had passed the "Miles Davis Funk in D" period, where the music was structured around key centers and repeated patterns. Prior to the "Funk in D" period were more traditional compositions, usually in odd meters similar to Mahavishnu Orchestra where improvisation took place over structured chord changes and meters. Miles, McLaughlin, Cecil Taylor, and ECM were influences along with modern composers like Takamitsu, Cage and Penderecki.

The period with you and Willie I call the "Games" period. Bored with traditional forms and charts, we created "Games". The Game when Willie came to the sessions was to be the musical soundtrack to his poetry. We added "The Drama".

I believe one of the musical games we played at Stella Blue was a little number called, "Everybody in the band pick a tune without telling the others in the band what you are playing and the tempo is equivalent to 1 beat every 30 seconds." At the end of the tune, we'd try to figure out what the others were playing. This piece had two public performances, I believe one was the first fateful night at Stella Blue.

Another tune was called "21 notes in three movements". Band members were trusted to play 21 notes and stop. Movements were Fast, Slow, and He Who Plays the Last Note Wins.

This period of OTO Games ended with the last of my compositions called "One Note". (You may have been at this performance). All band members chose one note and only one note to play. You could repeat the note as many times as possible, play it long, interact to create music hockets with others, but you only had one note. The first performance lasted 45 minutes, was recorded and has kind of taken on a world of its own with radio airplay in the 90's-- still not sure why.

After the Game period, OTO evolved into SciFi, a band with no concept for pieces except musical trust and improvisational composition. After that, there was no place to go musically. The bands dissolved.

Whatever period we were in, OTO always had listening and trust as a key component. We trusted that what was played would be heard and the musicians’ own compositional sense would react and respond, whether it took the form of acknowledgement through repeating an idea audibly or consciously ignoring the musical thoughts of the musicians around you.

The name OTR Studios came from Out There Recording, a tribute to the band.

I became a recording engineer and producer with a career that includes 5 Grammy Noms and 2 Gold records. The degree of "outness" we shared positioned me to be fearless in the studio with form, composition and musicality. I'm forever grateful.

Cookie Marenco

www.bluecoastrecords.com 

www.dsd-guide.com 

www.otrstudios.com 

www.cookiemarenco.com 

www.downloadsnow.net

Mike Morris' Coltrane Story

Here's a story from my friend Mike Morris. Mike is a terrific tenor player, whose playing career has included work with Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, Blue Mitchell, Isaac Hayes, Tom Harrell, Manhattan Transfer,  and many more. This story is from around 1962, when Mike was a high school kid.

John Coltrane was appearing at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, and Mike went to hear him. (Note: I remember that club, on Broadway in SF. I used to stand outside on the sidewalk to listen, as a high school kid.)

Mike said that Coltrane practiced all through every break - he was playing continuously for 4 hours. After the show was over, Mike walked up to Coltrane.

Mike: "Mr. Coltrane, that was great. You play so many great ideas. But can I ask you a question?"

Coltrane: "Sure."

Mike: "Do you really know everything that you're doing?"

Coltrane (in a friendly manner): "Yes, I do."

Mike: "I play the alto."

Coltrane: "I used to play the alto, but I gave it up. Charlie Parker already did everything there was to do on the alto. Nobody has figured out a way to play the alto that's any better. But the tenor is wide open. There's so much you can do on the tenor."

Mike: "Then I guess everyone else is going to have to play baritone!"

Coltrane: (laughs)

The Max Roach Workshop

In the mid-1980s I was working at a local non-profit music school, organizing their jazz program. One day I got a call from our music school director (a classical guy). "Have you heard of someone named Max Roach? He wants to do a workshop here." I told him that this was something we should definitely try to make happen, as Max Roach was one of the greatest drummers in the history of jazz.

Max had gotten a grant to do some performances and workshops in the San Francisco area, and as part of the package, needed to arrange some "community outreach." Somehow the name of our school came up, and his agent had made a call. Our director called back with an affirmative reply, we put out some publicity, and a couple of months later Max showed up to do the workshop.

Shaking hands, I couldn't help thinking that I was one handshake removed from... just about every major player in the jazz world. Max was wearing a suit with 1940s style high-waist, baggy pants, nicely creased. He reminded me of my Uncle Louis, a New Yorker of Max's generation, who dressed the same way.

There were around 40 people in the audience: perhaps 30 older non-musicians - bebop fans - and 10 or so relatively young student jazz players (that included me). Now, "workshop" is a sort of vague term, less specific than, say, "masterclass." We didn't know exactly what Max had in mind, and he probably didn't either, at least not until he had a chance to size up the audience.

Max talked for a few minutes about his current projects (working with dancers, I recall), and then sat down at the drum set and played for about 20 minutes, a couple of fascinating, virtuosic solo pieces. That was an education in itself, especially for the handful of drummers in the audience. Then Max said, "Would anyone like to come up here and play?"

Wow! For us young boppers, this was too good to be true... playing a tune with Max Roach! About 8 of us got our instruments and gathered around the drum set.

Max stood up, walked back into the audience, and took a seat. Then he said, "What are you going to play?" We discussed it for about 15 seconds. How about a blues? Great! How about "Now's the Time?" Max, from the audience, said, "Now's the Time... I think I played on that recording."

So we played "Now's the Time," everybody took a solo, maybe 10 or 12 minutes altogether. Max, talking to the rest of the audience, said "Ladies and gentlemen, do you see how this works? These musicians have probably never played together (true), but they have a common repertoire, and didn't have any problem improvising a performance..." Of course, we were a little disappointed that we weren't able to actually play a tune with Max, but what the heck, at least we played for him.

Max took questions for another 30 minutes or so, and then headed back to San Francisco for his gig at Fort Mason.

Keep Practicing

Here's another story about tempo, from my Uncle Ted:

Uncle Ted put himself through college in Chicago, in the 1920s, working as a jazz pianist. At one point, his group hired a teenage kid to play drums, who had such a lousy sense of time that they had to let him go after only a week or so.

Uncle Ted went on to a successful career as a patent attorney. The kid's name was Gene Krupa.

Businessman's Bounce

Last Saturday, as on most Saturdays, I drove to the Moffett Field Rec Center, where I coach a jazz combo class. We were working up a tune at gradually increasing tempos, and ran into that familiar problem - some tempos are easier to hold than others. I think it has something to do with the average human pulse rate. I was reminded of a couple of tempo-related gig stories.

Businessman’s Bounce

Some years ago, I had a series of country-club gigs with a pianist, “Bob,” and a guitarist, “Tommy.” I forget who was on bass and drums. Bob played OK, but he only used one intro, which was I VI II V , two beats each, repeated twice. He used that on pretty much every song. He also played in just one tempo - what musicians call “businessman’s bounce,” or “hotel tempo.” That’s at a metronome setting of about 132-138 beats per minute. This tempo is pleasant, happy, and danceable, and plays very well with a country club audience. You might note that 138 BPM is just about twice the typical human pulse rate.

The lack of tempo variety eventually began to drive Bob's sidemen up the wall. Finally at one of these gigs, after 3 hours of the same intro and the same tempo, and with an hour still to go, Tommy decided to put it delicately to Bob: “Maybe we should play a ballad, just to change it up.”

Bob said, “That’s a great idea! We’ll play a ballad! Let’s play Body and Soul!”

So Bob started it off with an intro...I VI II V, repeated twice, at 138 BPM.

Auld Lang Syne

It was New Year’s Eve, 2000. As you may recall, it was a big deal - Y2K, a new millennium. The big band I played with at the time had a gig at the Pacific-Union Club in San Francisco. To say that this is a high-society club only begins to describe it. You have to at least look at the Wikipedia entry (scroll down for the “list of prominent members”), and perhaps read some of the Yelp reviews (“The first rule about the Pacific-Union Club is that you don’t talk about the Pacific-Union Club”). The membership overlaps considerably with the Bohemian Club (see this scholarly article). The club doesn't have a website, at least not one that you or Google can access. But I digress.

From about 7:30, I was with a quartet playing jazz standards at the bar. The piano player pointed out a former Secretary of State standing a few feet away, chatting. At about 9:00, we joined the big band in the ballroom for the dance sets, to usher in the new year. A special show was planned for midnight: At 11:45, there would be a Chinese lion dance, and then at the stroke of midnight, a bagpiper would walk in playing “Auld Lang Syne.” The band was instructed to join in, and the guests would all join in singing. We didn’t have a chart, and didn’t know what key the piper would be playing in.

So at 11:45 the lion dancers put on their show - very impressive. Then the guests were all brought to the floor of the ballroom facing the band, we counted down the seconds, and at the stroke of midnight the bagpiper walked in, playing “Auld Lang Syne.”

We caught the key immediately - he was playing in Bb, which fortunately is an easy key for a big band. However, the bagpiper had a sense of tempo that was, let’s say, extremely flexible. The music was quite chaotic, with the band trying to match a constantly shifting “one.” This Youtube video will give you a rough idea. Start at 0:45 in, and imagine a piper that is far more tempo-challenged. I don’t think the guests had much luck singing along.

The Wal-Mart Gig

This one came through a non-profit music school, where I worked at the time as jazz coordinator. Wal-Mart was opening a new store in our town, and was interested in establishing positive ties with the community. Because a member of the school’s board of directors was involved with developing the shopping center, I got the call.

When “Rick,” the music school director, told me that I had a gig to play the national anthem and some jazz for the grand opening of a Wal-Mart, from 8 to 10 AM, I said I’d only do it if the pay was good. He managed to extract $154 per player for two hours, with a $500 donation to the school, for a trio.

To play this gig, I had to find a sub for the middle school jazz band that I taught on Wednesdays, at 7:30 AM. A new teacher at the music school, a bright young percussionist just out of college, said he’d be glad to sub for me. I gave him a map to the middle school, and we agreed to meet there at 7:15.

On the day of the gig, I showed up at the school, tuned up the band, and waited as long as I could. No sub. I put the band under the direction of a trusted 8th grader, and left at about 7:50 for the Wal-Mart. (Although the kid did a great job, I now realize that this was a poor idea, and would not do it again.)

I arrived at the Wal-Mart a few minutes after 8:00, and was relieved to learn that the national anthem had been rescheduled to 8:15. Our bass player was there, but our guitar player did not arrive until 8:30. We played the national anthem with just bass and tenor sax. It went OK. In attendance were around 50 employees of the new store; the general public was not allowed in until 9:00.

Before we played our jazz set, there were about a dozen speakers. They were each welcomed by the assembled employees with a special cheer: “GOOD MORNING, WANDA! WELCOME TO WAL-MART! HUNH!!” The last word was delivered with fist jabs into the air. After the speakers, a local Catholic priest asked God to bless the building, and “all the buyers and sellers.” Then a pioneer Wal-Mart employee spoke about how she had known “Mr. Sam” (Sam Walton). She was close to tears. She told us that in this country anything is possible, and we might be the next Mr. Sam. Our guitarist, who had arrived by then, whispered, “I can’t believe this.” Finally, the employees gave another special Wal-Mart cheer, spelling out the company name and ending with 50 people snapping their fingers for about 10 seconds. Then it was time for us to play.

As the customers were coming in, we played upbeat jazz numbers. One of the first customers was inebriated. He listened to the band for a few minutes, then sat down on a bench a few feet away, next to a life-size replica of Ronald McDonald (there was a McDonald’s franchise inside the Wal-Mart). He put one arm over Ronald’s shoulder, and pulled out a $20 bill. He held up the bill, waving it at the customers coming in the front entrance. We kept on playing our upbeat jazz - bossas, Ellington, standards.

After about fifteen minutes, two employees took the guy to the back room. Twenty minutes later the local police showed up, to escort him out of the store. He was OK, but looked depressed.

After an hour of playing for arriving shoppers, 10:00 arrived. As we were packing up, the assistant manager asked us to play a little longer (they would pay us). The CEO of Wal-Mart was driving in from Pleasanton, and they wanted music for his arrival. We agreed to play for another half hour. He hadn’t shown by 10:30, so we packed up again, and went home. I called the drummer who was supposed to have taught my class; he had forgotten what day it was. The kids had rehearsed by themselves.

The rest of the day was solid with teaching obligations. At my evening class, an improvisation workshop, one of my adult students recollected that he had worked with my father 30 years earlier. They had worked for an early Silicon Valley company, on a project to develop a 42-track tape recorder that would fit inside a suitcase: “You can guess what 3-letter agency that was for.” My dad had never told me about that, of course. 

Hangar One

This morning, as on most Saturdays, I drove down to Moffett Field, for the jazz combo class that I coach there. We meet at the old Navy Rec Hall, a building a few hundred yards south of Hangar One. Hangar One, if you don't know it, is a huge structure built in 1932 to house a Navy dirigible, the USS Macon. The Macon is long gone, but Hangar One is still there, a unique local landmark. Recently it was found to be leaking PCBs into the ground, and the decision was made to remove its skin. NASA, which now runs Moffett, is trying to find funding to restore it.


Here's a picture. If you look closely, you can see the size of the people lined up at the entrance.

Anyway, this reminded me of a big band gig I played a few years ago, inside Hangar One. I can't recall which band this was - if you were on this gig, please refresh my memory.


We were hired to play for a reception the night before the opening of an air show. They put us on a stage right in the middle of the hangar. Hangar One is truly huge - 1,133 feet long, and 308 feet wide. The floor is concrete. This adds up to the most horrible acoustics that a musician could imagine. 


At 68 degrees F., sound travels at 1128 feet/second. Thus, the music played by a big band in the middle of Hangar One will reflect off the far walls and back with a delay of about one second, and reflect off the side walls with a delay of about 1/3 of a second. The far wall is actually curved, and there are of course all sorts of secondary reflections, with various long delays. It was an incredible cacophany. We couldn't hear ourselves play. There was not much we could do except to play as loudly as possible, so we could at least hear the sounds coming out of our own instruments. The band didn't have much finesse that night.


The process of disassembling the hangar began this week. When they finally get the hangar restored, I'm sure they'll have an opening ceremony. Maybe I'll get lucky and be on the gig.

That's Sophia

A couple of Italian-American gig stories:

Volare

I played for years with a 17-piece big band, led first by Johnny L., later by Adrian D. This first story took place when it was John’s band. We were scheduled to play an Italian wedding at a hall about 15 minutes from my house. At the time, I had two cars, a 1971 Datsun and a 1972 Ford Pinto. Neither one worked very well. The Datsun’s brakes were shot, and it was dangerous to drive. The Pinto’s starter motor was just about gone.

I left the house with my tenor sax and clarinet, wearing my tux. I had cut the time pretty close. I should get there with about 10 minutes to set up. I decided to take the Pinto, figuring that it was somewhat less dangerous to drive. Unfortunately, this was the day that the starter died completely. After 10 minutes of trying to fix it, I gave up and loaded my stuff into the Datsun. I drove to the gig extra-carefully on account of the brakes, and arrived about 20 minutes after the downbeat.

I hurried into the hall, set up my instruments, and sat down with the sax section. The band was playing a chart of “Volare (Nel Blu Dipinto Blu).” That translates: “To Fly (In the Blue Painted Blue).” Dean Martin got a hit recording out of it in the 1950s.

The trombones were seated right behind the saxes. Joe D., a trombonist, stopped playing long enough to lean forward and ask me:

 “What happened, Peter? De Pinto Blew?”

That’s Sophia

We had a gig in San Francisco, at the Museum of Modern Art. The same band, now led by Adrian D., had been engaged to play for a “Tribute to Sophia Loren,” organized by the Italian consulate. Sophia herself was going to be there, with her husband, producer Carlo Ponti. The band members were excited about the gig. Some were looking forward to getting her autograph.

The band was stationed in the Schwab Room, to provide music for pre-dinner cocktails. The backdrop for our stage was a 30-foot tall caricature of Sophia. We played a set of big band favorites, then the guests adjourned to the main hall, the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium, where the dinner tables were, and a stage with podium, for the Master of Ceremonies. The Schwab Room and the main hall were separated by a wide doorway that could be closed with big sliding birch panels.

Looking from the bandstand into the Atrium, we could see that there weren’t going to be any autographs. All we could see of Sophia and Carlo was their four bodyguards, in tuxedos, standing by their table in the middle of the hall. 

The guests were society people, sponsors of the museum. One of them had written special lyrics to be sung to the tune of “That’s Amore.” Here is a sample:

When a star makes you drool 

And you feel like a fool

That’s Sophia!!

etc.

Copies of the song had been distributed to the audience. The plan was that the Master of Ceremonies would sing the first few lines through the microphone, then the band would strike up the tune, and then the entire audience would join in.

Just before the song was to start, the event planner decided to shut the sliding door. The band was miked; the event planner (peeking through the closed panel into the hall) would give us the signal to start, and our classy big-band accompaniment would be piped into the main hall via the sound system.

The Master of Ceremonies started the song. We got the high sign, and came in as arranged. We didn’t have a clue what the audience was doing until the event planner noticed that they had finished, and we were still playing. We had been completely out of synch with the audience, the whole time. Adrian cut the band off with half a chorus still to go. 

But it was OK. We didn’t disturb the show - the sound system had never been turned on. We had been playing for ourselves. Our job was done. We collected our checks and packed up our instruments.

  

The Persian Wedding

This was in about 1983, when I played with a Brazilian band called Corpo Santo. We were booked to play for a Persian wedding in Sausalito, across the bay from San Francisco. The reception was scheduled for 3:00, at a church in the hills above downtown Sausalito, on Labor Day. The band members lived in either San Francisco or Palo Alto, so we decided to pool rides in a car and a van.

John (our flutist/percussionist) and I drove to SF, followed by Rich (keyboard), in his van. We stopped in SF to pick up Bira (leader/singer/guitarist), and got some bad news: Our drummer had been stopped by the police on the freeway the night before, and was cited for smoking pot. Rather than go to court, he had taken the first flight back to Brazil. Bira had called Rudy, a fine Latin percussionist but a beginner on traps. The plan was that Rudy would borrow a drum set and meet us on a corner on 19th Avenue, on our way to the Golden Gate Bridge, and we'd all ride together to Sausalito.

Rudy met us on the corner with a shoddy borrowed drum set. However, we had neglected to consider the Labor Day traffic. We were going down 19th at about 5 mph, falling further and further behind schedule. By 3:00 - downbeat time - we could see the bridge ahead of us. By 5:00, we had crossed the bridge. By 5:30, we were in downtown Sausalito. John jumped out of the car and bought a map (this was 1983 - no cell phones, no Google maps) while we sat in stalled traffic. Finally we got out of the traffic jam, drove up the hill, and parked to consult the map, to find the church.

Rich parked just down the hill from me, got out of his van, and walked towards my car. In my rear view mirror I saw the van rolling slowly backwards, down the hill. Rich ran back, jumped in, and stopped the van after it had rolled about ten feet. We went back to the map, found the church, and finally arrived at 6:00, about three hours late.

The party was going strong, people dancing to Persian rock and roll playing on a boom box, everybody drinking. No one noticed that we were three hours late. We set up our equipment, and Bira counted off the first tune. Rudy hit the first beat on his ride cymbal, which fell onto the rest of his drums, knocking them all over. We kept playing, while he set them up again.

We had been given some special Persian wedding music to learn, a piece called Mobarak Bad.  This apparently translates as "Happy Wedding," or "Congratulations" (I think it's a sort of Persian equivalent of "Celebrate"). Our Brazilian/American band gave it a good effort - Bira and Rudy set up a 6/8 Afro beat, and I played the melody on soprano sax. The dancers liked it, but seemed confused when I tried improvising on the tune, so I just played the melody over and over, while the band picked up the tempo. The dancers liked that.

It turned out to be a pretty good gig. Rudy made friends with a Persian-American kid who brought us plenty of champagne, and told Rudy the special dirty lyrics that the kids sing to Mobarak Bad. We got paid, and no one said a word about us showing up three hours late. Years afterwards, a Persian musician told me that it is normal in Iran for musicians to show up late ("It means it's going to be a good party"). He said that they were maybe as bad as Brazilians that way.